Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

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Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by marauding mullet » Fri Jan 31, 2014 3:22 pm

I've been wanting to get these fragments of memory out of my head and into writing for years, because the fragments are getting smaller and fuzzier and I've never actually recounted the story in full, not even verbally.
I'm not working at the moment, so it's time to use the spare time.

I went to South Africa in 1980 with some mates, it was the first overseas trip for all of us, and more of an adventure than anything I've experienced since. I could just write this on the computer, print it off and put it in a drawer but what the hell, I've found this surf forum now so here goes, if an old guy waffling bores you turn away now……but there are some good pics for those with short attention spans…..

My mate Jonno and I (both Adelaide boys) decided in 1979 that we just had to go to South Africa to surf. This decision was brought about largely by first hand accounts, told over cups of tea at campfires by friends who had actually been there. The main culprit was Paul Gravelle, a Sth. African who had set up shop at Cactus building boards, his glasser Baz, and a handful of others who's stories had us frothing.
A couple of Victorian Cactus regulars Harry and Mick, who had become good mates of ours had also caught the bug and so we hatched the plan that we would all go together in the winter of 1980 for the full 3 months that a visa would allow.
We all went our separate ways to earn the money for airfares and spending money, kept in contact, and worked hard at gathering info for the trip. I went to WA and worked in my trade as a Diesel Mechanic in Mt. Newman for 6 months, Jonno did his thing on the Tuna boats, and the 2 Victorians probably robbed a bank.
Gathering info was a big deal and we worked hard at it, grilling everybody for anything useful, writing it all down and comparing notes. There was no internet of course, not even a useful book on surfing in Sth. Africa so all info was hard won and precious…places to stay, places to surf, how to get around, things to watch out for etc.
When the time came near we all met up at Cactus again to tune up our surfing for 3 weeks, then straight to Perth for the plane. I had my trusty 6'6" Gravelle, but I got him to make me a 7 footer to take as well because I thought I would need it for J-bay.

In the pics…this was my life for 6 months, fixing these things. The HT Holden is mine, intact on the way up to Newman from Perth, the other one is the same car after I pulled the pin from Newman and fell asleep at the wheel and rolled it halfway back to Perth. Lucky I wasn't really hurt, except for climbing out the drivers window without realising I was up a tree, because not a sole came along for 2 hours. In the meantime I gathered a few of my belongings from down the road, which had all been strewn out the broken windows on both sides of the road as the car must have rolled quite a few times. I found my camera and took a couple of pics, then a farmer came along in a tractor, asked if I was O.K. and gave me a cold beer from his on-tractor esky. Using his tractor we got the car down off the tree but the poor old HT was Chernobyled. The farmer gave me a lift into the next town where I struck a deal with the towns wrecker, I told him where the car was and he paid me cash in good faith without even seeing the wreck. I jumped on a bus with whatever I had salvaged and headed for Adelaide.
To be continued….
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by Grooter » Fri Jan 31, 2014 3:31 pm

Awesome keep it coming!
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by offshore1 » Fri Jan 31, 2014 3:48 pm

Yeah, that's good stuff MM, you've got a worldwide audience.
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by marauding mullet » Fri Jan 31, 2014 4:37 pm

Don't give me stage fright offshore.
There was only one flight a fortnight from Perth, and as it turned out the 2 Victorians had to leave on the following flight from Jonno and I so the plan was we would spend 2 weeks in Durban then meet up with Harry and Mick then all make our way down to J-bay.
The plane used to stop in Mauritius in those days to let people on and off and refuel. We didn't know it at the time but we could have got off and spent 2 weeks there at no extra cost then continued onwards.
I remembered Baz telling us stories about Mauritius, and a mate of his Spyder Wills who had been involved in the filming of that movie "The forgotten Island Of Santosha" which was all Mauritius. Never mind, we didn't know.
Jonno and I got off the plane in Johannesburg and made our way into the city to catch the train South to Durban. Joberg is a hellhole, you don't hang around there, especially with surfboards and hospital dirty-linen bags we had stolen while visiting a mate in hospital, they made good free luggage.
We booked a room in a cockroach palace and found a movie theatre to pass the time.
The Deer Hunter had just come out, so we were sitting in a dark theatre in Joberg waiting for the movie to start. The screen was a dim blank white, the theatre black and silent, when the silhouette of a fat bellied patron appeared on the side of the screen making his way across the theatre. The entire crowd including us sat silently and watched this person bob along the screen, there was nothing else to look at. He got to the other side and bounced off the wall like a 3 stooges skit.
Jonno couldn't contain himself and laughed like a Baboon at full volume, while everyone was silent. I sunk into my seat urging him to shut the fcuk up before he got us lynched. He laughed even louder and didn't stop until thank Christ the movie started.
After an interesting evening of watching murder and mayhem in real life from the window of our Hillbrow hotel room, we surfaced to find our way to the train station.
So what do you do when in a strange city and you need directions? You ask a local.
Everyone was black. I'll just say right now that we had no interest or knowledge of anything political, or the state of play of anything at all in Sth. Africa, we were completely gormless.
I stopped the first person who walked by and tried to ask for directions, and got a point blank brush-off.
Hhmm…okay next guy same thing. Third black guy looked around, took several steps back and reversed himself into a doorway where nobody could see him and urged us closer.
"You can't fcuking just walk up to black people and start talking to them you fcuking idiots you'll get us all beaten up..where the fcuk are you from?"
He gave us very brief directions, and still wondering what all that was about, we made our way to the train station, bought tickets to Durban and jumped onto a filthy carriage to settle down for a nice train ride.
The carriage was crowded, very crowded, standing room only and we had all this luggage and boards and stuff and we were getting some pretty ugly looks from our wholly black travel buddies.
The train started moving, and I suggested we push up to the next carriage and see if it was any better. Three carriages later, a nice almost empty, clean breath of fresh air carriage from heaven. Little did we know it had 1st class written on the outside, which in Sth. African reads as white. The first carriages all had 3rd class written on the outside which reads as black. There is no such thing as 2nd class anywhere, weird. We weren't quick learners.
The train ride was an overnighter, going through some magnificent country and turned out to be quite pleasant. We arrived in Durban and made our way to a hotel place we had been told about on the seafront in the Bay of Plenty, the on the North side of Durban.
This is a pic of Cave rock, one of the metropolitan beaches on the south side of Durban harbour.
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by ctd » Fri Jan 31, 2014 5:22 pm

V interesting.

"Gormless" is a great word.

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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by Karlos » Fri Jan 31, 2014 5:32 pm

Enjoying it over here as well Mentone, but I'm thinking that you need better storage methods for your old photos. Whatever your using at the moment just ain't working.

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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by marauding mullet » Fri Jan 31, 2014 5:53 pm

The photos are a real shame. There was a fire back in Oz (a story unto itself) and they just survived. Every time I got them out to look at them, more little pieces would crumble away. Just recently I spent a couple of days scanning them all onto the computer and what you see is the result. In a strange way they're now a metaphor for my own memories of that part of my life.
I shot 2 roles of film around Durban, but they went missing before they even got developed. The huge scary Zulu guy that was cleaning our room everyday either threw them out or nicked them. I used to leave loose change laying around for him, sort of like the Balinese leave offerings on the footpath. We never spoke to him, but the coins disappeared every day so I kept leaving it. He was a big boy, with holes in his earlobes the size of beer coasters and tribal scarring all over him that gave him a presence you just didn't fcuk with.
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by marauding mullet » Fri Jan 31, 2014 6:40 pm

We checked into a place on the seafront overlooking the Bay of Plenty. An old 4 or 5 story hotel/guest house building sandwiched between 2 enormous glitzy hotels, the Elangeni and the Maharani. The contrast between the 2 hotels and our dump couldn't have been more stark. In the lobby was a non-working lift, and a reception desk with bars protecting an overweight Lady who told us up front she didn't want any trouble with any Australian bloody surfers. A tough old bird who turned out be O.K.
Getting our priorities in order we traversed the hundred metres or so of parkland in front, and paddled straight out into 5 foot Bay of Plenty juice. It was awesome, that place has some power. There's plenty of peaks along a long stretch of beach interspersed with break walls.
Durban is like a cross between Newcastle and the Gold Coast. There's a big busy working harbour and a constant backdrop of ships whenever you look out at the surf just like Newcastle. It's got the climate of the Gold Coast, and it's surf city just like both places. Surfing is big in Durban, but the crowds were very thin on week days, we were stoked.
As soon as we got that first surf out of our system, the next priority was to try some of that famous Durban Poison we'd heard so much about. The first cool surfie looking dude we asked helped us out without a second thought, and even had a tiny clay chillum in his pocket which he gave us. Minutes later were up in our room busting a chillum.
Jonno and I looked at each other after a couple and couldn't work out what all the fuss was about……nothing. How disappointing.
Not deterred we decided to go for a walk outside and have a look around.
I stepped onto the footpath outside the hotel and went one way, and Jonno somehow went the other and that was the last thing either of us remembered until we accidentally bumped into each other at a roller coaster fun park thing across the road. Neither of us had any idea where we had been or how we got here. Two hours had just vanished, bloody hell. We were much less liberal with the local weed after that.

We surfed our brains out for 2 weeks, waiting for the 2 vicco guys to arrive, and had a ball, occasionally catching a local train about 30 minutes down the coast to Greenpoint just for something different. Green point was a good right hand point break, but a bit changeable with the tide, it never seemed to stay good for more than a couple of hours.
To get the train back to Durban we had to wait on a tiny platform which had 2 little bus shelter type structures on it, they were meant to be labelled black and white but they weren't so it didn't matter which one we sat in, if any black people came along they automatically sat in the other one. If we got there first, we always made sure we sat upwind of the other shelter so that people in the other shelter could smell what we were smoking. They always came up to join in when invited since it was so isolated. We soon worked out that barriers were easily broken down if you made the effort.

This pic is not mine I just got it off the net. The Elangeni and the Maharani and our little hovel in the middle, called Mentone Mansions.
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by Karlos » Fri Jan 31, 2014 7:26 pm

I did figure something along those lines Mr Mansions. They are effective the way they are though. Keep the words coming.

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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by carpetman » Fri Jan 31, 2014 7:44 pm

This is awesome. Can't wait for the next instalment!

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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by marauding mullet » Fri Jan 31, 2014 8:32 pm

Harry and Mick finally showed up in Durban and got a room next to us. Happy days.
The first order of business was how to get the 4 of us to J-bay. We decided to hire a car for a few weeks on a oneway rental. We rang the car hire company and they kindly offered to send the car to us, great!
None of us were prepared for the 2 girls that showed up with our Mazda 323, my god they were something.
Stunning, dignified, professional, but there was no getting any rise out of these 2, they were staunch, no eye contact, no small talk, no smiles. When I think about them now they remind me of that Cake song.."short skirt/long jacket"
South African girls…WOW.

Now that we had wheels, we decided to surf around Durban to acclimatise the Vic boys for a few days then hit the road for the long drive south. First foray in the little car was a little drive to Cave Rock, on the other side of the harbour.
We pulled up to this suburban beach and couldn't believe our eyes. Glassy, crystal clear 4-6 foot right hand perfection, one guy out and HOLLOW.
We all just lit up at the sight and started frantically getting ready. As we did, Harry said the guy in the water looked like Shaun Tomson…yeah right. I was watching this guy as i got ready, and saw him come firing out of one long barrel after another. He would completely disappear, gone for all money, seconds more would pass…nah he ain't coming out of this one..then woosh, like being fired out of a canon every time.
We got out there and couldn't paddle into our first waves quick enough. The water was just invisible it was so clear, you could see the sandy reef on the bottom like a glass bottom boat.
I paddled for my first one and got lip-launched, big time. I thought I was pretty good at taking steep drops on gutsy waves, after all that's what we surfed mostly at home. Next one threw me out in front like the last one.
The other guys probably weren't faring much better, this place was tricky, it really had me stuffed, I was eating shit all over the place and taking quite a beating.
The only other guy out did turn out to be Shaun Tomson. He was riding a twin fin, and from our new vantage point in the water we could see him manoeuvring that slidey twitchy little twinny deep inside the tube. He was like a noisy tappet, just on fire, constantly adjusting and coming back from losing control. Mind blowing.
Eventually we all started to get a handle on this place called Cave Rock, and a few decent waves, it was intense like nothing I'd ever experienced. Humbling is probably what it was. We were all buzzing for the next 24 hours from that. Shaun said hullo to us in the water, asked where we were from and seemed a cool guy.

The following day there was only one place we were heading, Cave Rock.
This time however, it was a Saturday, and it was all of 12 foot.
This spectacle has stayed with me more than any other surf scene I've ever witnessed. It was perfect again, but packed, and these guys weren't mucking around. They were dropping in on each other in droves, on 12 foot waves, and they could surf. It was heavy duty, and I knew there was no way I was going out. The one and only time in my life that I ever piked it, and I didn't care. I was happy just to witness these maniacs. I suddenly had a whole new respect for these Sth. Africans, they are a tough bunch, those Cave Rock locals. The other guys started making noises about going out, but I could see they weren't exactly gung-ho about it. They did go out, but I don't remember if anyone got a wave, Jonno said he did but I didn't see it.
Nothing that heavy happened again in Sth. Africa, and it was unforgettable.
The pics are Harry with his 6'9" Gravelle, the car pics are Greenpoint, the rest Shaun Tomson solo at Cave Rock
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by Rustt » Sat Feb 01, 2014 8:39 am

Haha, I grew up surfing with Harry and Bromma(mick) they are about 3 years older than me and inspired me to hang out in South Africa myself not to long after, was speaking to Harry last week he lives in Penong now.

Was Pete the kneeboarder at J/bay on that trip?

Got a chuckle out of your line about the viccos of robbing banks, wouldn't be to successful if Mick was the getaway driver. :lol:

Harry has told me of that trip so many times.

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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by marauding mullet » Sat Feb 01, 2014 10:27 am

Matticus Finch wrote:Wow! Pace yourself MM.
All good Matt, this has been bottled up for 33 years, no stopping now.
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by marauding mullet » Sat Feb 01, 2014 10:40 am

crustt wrote:Haha, I grew up surfing with Harry and Bromma(mick) they are about 3 years older than me and inspired me to hang out in South Africa myself not to long after, was speaking to Harry last week he lives in Penong now.

Was Pete the kneeboarder at J/bay on that trip?

Got a chuckle out of your line about the viccos of robbing banks, wouldn't be to successful if Mick was the getaway driver. :lol:

Harry has told me of that trip so many times.
I'm so glad there's a connection here crustt, any friend of Harry and Brummer is a friend of mine. You couldn't ask for 2 better travelling companions than those guys.
I said at the start that it was everybody's first O/S trip, but I just remembered that Harry and Brummer had a fairly lengthy trip to Bali in the mid seventies, and that experience really showed.
Group dynamics are so important on a trip. At that age (me 22) you haven't yet learnt to live with other people harmoniously, it takes experience and effort.
Jonno and I were used to grovelling and living out of each others pockets, but we got on each others Goat at times, but Harry and Brummer were just so laid back and cool, they were gold.
Pics……Harry playing totem tennis on the front lawn of Atlantis guest house J-bay. The other 2 are the old man of the sea himself, Brummer playing with betty the ex-police dog with harry in the background and Brummer sitting on our hire car.
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by marauding mullet » Sat Feb 01, 2014 10:45 am

Ringmaster wrote:Thanks for making the effort MM! Great to read this sort of stuff on a SURFING forum compared to the usual pointless garbage from the likes of AndySoar and Fong etc.

I spent a couple of months in S.A with 2 mates in June/July 95'. Flew into Capetown and bought an old car which we drove as far as Kwazulu Natal including 2 and a half weeks at (sometimes) pumping J Bay. Sold it to some Indian guy in Durban then caught the train to Joburg to fly home. Was one of the best surfing/travel experiences I've had and met some classic people.

Keep the stories and pics coming mate. Be good to hear how you went at J Bay back then as well as some of the reefs near Capetown.
Thanks Ringy, J-bay was as far south as we got, money and time constraints saw to that, there is just so much more to see I'm sure. It's not too late yet, I hope to finish that trip one day even if it is 35 years later.
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by marauding mullet » Sat Feb 01, 2014 10:59 am

AHH I see what you mean now Matt, yeah good idea.
It wouldn't be the end of the world if this disappeared, I'm writing mainly as an outlet, but I'll save it somehow.
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by marauding mullet » Sat Feb 01, 2014 11:06 am

crustt wrote:Was Pete the kneeboarder at J/bay on that trip?
Yes mate Peter kneeboarder was there, we knew him well from cactus, he wasn't travelling with us but we hooked up with him in J-bay…great guy.
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Re: Wide eyed rubbernecks in South Africa 1980

Post by marauding mullet » Sat Feb 01, 2014 12:27 pm

Back on the road, boards piled high on the Mazda, we checked out of Durban and headed South but didn't get all that far.
An hour or so down the coast we stopped into a fruit and veg shop and got talking to the owner. He saw the boards on the car and told us about a surf spot not far away called "The spot"
Well what would a non-surfing fruit and veg vendor know about surf spots?
We chanced it and went for a look. His lead was a good one, The Spot was magic, a beautiful little right hander that had everything. It was remote, the wave had lots of little hollow pockets mixed in with fast sections and I remember it as one of the best waves of the trip, but there were so many good waves.

I'm just gonna go off on a tangent here. I don't understand how there haven't been more world champion surfers come out of Sth. Africa, the quality of the surf on the doorstep of major population centres puts anything in Oz to shame.
If I was to go back to Sa to surf, I would stay in Natal province, of which Durban is capital.
I loved Durban, it's warm, an interesting city, it's alive with character. There's a big Indian population there which makes it different and more vibrant than anywhere else we went to, and you don't have to go far to get away from it all. Things may have changed, I hope not.

Anyway back at The Spot, we decided to rent a house for a while and stick around. Memory is foggy here, but I think we stayed about a week in a furnished house and surfed the area daily.
One day at The Spot, we pulled up in the car to find, to our surprise another car load of surfers already there. It was O.K. though, they had already been out and were getting changed. One of them was Shaun Tomson, he remembered us from the other day at Cave Rock and came over for a chat. After learning that we surfed Sth. Oz he asked if we knew Paul Gravelle, yeah we knew him. After a chinwag, he said see ya round and went back to his car, but (I guess it's alright to say this) one of the other guys he was with came over and handed us a tupperware container full of mull.
For a country where pot is so freely available and widely used, much more so than Oz, the law enforcement of it is frightening. The cops all look like Springbok front rowers, and dish out their own punishment before you ever see a courtroom. The law itself is harsh too, what happened to Michael Tomson's potentially brilliant international surfing career is testament to that. You can't do much without a passport.

The house was fun, we cooked our own meals and had a ball. Every night we could here Monkeys out there rattling around in our rubbish bin. I fcuking hate Monkeys, evil goblins from hell, I think I actually pulled the blankets up over my head one night. We had a couple of local black kids come in one day and ask if they could wash the car for money. It didn't need washing and even if it did we weren't the type to ever wash our cars at home, but these kids were only waist high and cute as buttons. We had no car cleaning stuff, it didn't matter, they improvised. They tipped the garbage out of our bin, filled it with water and took their T-shirts off and used them as rags. Then the car radio went on full blast, and away they went dancing around to the radio, which was what it was all about, the radio. I think the car ended up dirtier than it started, but the handful of coins and amusement value was well worth it.

The call of J-bay was getting too loud to ignore so we hit the road again.
It's a long drive, we drove until around midnight and were completely knackered. We decided to find somewhere to sleep, anywhere..we needed to get out of that cramped little car.
I've got no idea where we were, but we walked into a small motel where there still lights on. We couldn't find any life at first, but then a young guy greeted us and said he would give us 2 rooms for free.
He had met a surfer a couple of years back, a travelling American who had stayed here and the 2 of then must have become good friends. He mentioned the guys name, I'd never heard of him but Mick had. He was apparently a kind of playboy famous American surfer who had actually passed away the year before, but Mick didn't have the heart to tell him.
This young black kid couldn't do enough for us, the boss had gotten filthy drunk that night and passed out in his room, so this kid gave us 2 rooms and told us he would come back at 6.00am and wake us up then we had to get out before the boss woke up. I was a bit nervous about this "boss" finding us but it all went to plan.
That kid took an enormous risk to help 4 complete strangers, he could have had the piss beaten out of him by other blacks just for helping us (because we saw that happen in J-bay one night), and he could have lost his job if his boss knew.

Finally we arrived at the pot of gold..J-bay
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Last edited by marauding mullet on Mon Oct 07, 2019 12:53 pm, edited 3 times in total.
petulance wrote: 01100100 01101001 01100111 01101001 01110100 01100001 01101100 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101011
Lucky Al wrote:
Fri Aug 18, 2023 10:07 pm
You're a spazz Mighty Sunbird.

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